Aerial 6's lighter in the low end than the 7b's...

I have Model 6's and the bass is about right, though maybe a touch heavy on some recordings with a lot of electric bass. Acoustic bass in jazz and classical recordings is good. Having the port in front helps a lot. What I am dissatisfied with is the lower midrange. It is too slight relative to upper midrange to give a good sense of the singer or instrument being in the room. For example, a piano is weighted toward the sound of the hammers and away from the sound of the cabinet resonance. This may be because the bass is relatively louder (?) and masks the lower midrange. Get a trial pair if possible and bring them home to try; these qualities are very subtle in an otherwise nicely balanced product. Tube electronics can help, but don't forget the 6's require near to 100 watts, so triodes won't work.

I agree with the previous remarks. I own the 10T's and find the bass to be defined but never bloaty. They are very amp sensitive, meaning, they need a lot of power to show off what they can do; some very nice tube amps were auditioned and I found they just didn't have what it takes to make the 10T's shine. I mention this because the amps I tried did make the bass seem 'boomy' and ill-defined. (I do not have the bucks to acquire 300 watts of pure tube power which is the minimum the 10T needs.) I suspect that the other Aerial line requires a fair amount of power.

I also believe Aerial makes great speakers, and they will let you know what is happening upstream. I would advise you to take note of the rest of the system before judging any speaker. I recently heard an "all tube" system with some very exotic cables/interconnects and it sounded so harsh and "solid state" I couldn't believe it. Audio is a 'black art'--who can say what combination works well for every ear? It's not easy to audition any components; it requires a fair amount of listening to various combinations, but in the long haul, it's worth your dime.

I own the 6's and find them very satisfactory in the bass area; my radio shack SPL meter gives me flat response with the 6's down to about 35 Hz (aside from room interaction - see below). As always with bass, it really depends on your room. Look at it this way - we can presume a lot of "science" goes in to balancing a speaker of this price and from a respected designer. How much "science" went into your listening room? The point is that the variables your room presents is probably always a much larger factor in performance than the variables even cheaper speakers present. My room has a huge "suckout" at 60 Hz and a bloat at other frequencies both higher and lower that drive me nuts. I don't think that different speakers in my room would solve anything. Anyway, I highly recommend the Aerials - for one 7 inch driver, bass is really good, tight, and accurate down to the specified LFE. I can tell you that of the other speakers I have owned, PSB Gold i's, B&W Matrix 802 III's, NHT super 2's (yeah, I know, not fair), the Aerial has by far the best quality (the B&W's were close) though of course not the lowest. NOW, having said all that, I wish I had the 7b's for my room which is 13 X 22 - but I will not exchange them because I know I will be moving to a smaller house soon. So for a small room, definitely the 6's...

I owned the Model 5s (wonderful speakers, by the way), which only go down to about 70hz. I called Aerial and spoke with Michael Kelly to discuss how to extract a bit more of the lowest octaves from them.

During our conversation, he told me that the BEST speaker in the Aerial lineup (as far as imaging and overall musicality are concerned) is the Model 6. He said that, while this would be very unusual, the best setup would not be the 10T, but instead the Model 6 paired with their subwoofer. He did caution against using just "any" subwoofer as most so-called subwoofers do not truly extend deep enough to be considered subwoofers. It's very unlikely that a consumer would buy a $3,000 speaker and pair it with a (almost) $4,000 subwoofer. For that kinda' jack, they'll just go for the 10T. But it does make you stop and think. (I feel the same way about the Revel Gems with the Revel sub instead of the Salons.)

Anyway, I thought it was interesting. I've listened to the 6 as well as the 7 and felt that the 6 was more musical overall. Even still - I liked the Model 5 the best. The new 5B has been re-designed to accomodate multi-use duty in HT applications - higher sensitivity, higher SPL capability. It's a sad sign of the times.